Most of the remarks that I have already made in speaking of masters and servants may be
applied to masters and workmen. As the gradations of the social scale come to be less observed,
while the great sink and the humble rise and poverty as well as opulence ceases to be hereditary,
the distance, both in reality and in opinion, which heretofore separated the workman from the
master is lessened every day. The workman conceives a more lofty opinion of his rights, of his
future, of himself; he is filled with new ambition and new desires, he is harassed by new wants.
Every instant he views with longing eyes the profits of his employer; and in order to share them he
strives to dispose of his labor at a higher rate, and he generally succeeds at length in the attempt.
In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are
carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of
those whom they employ. These manufacturing speculators are extremely numerous; their
interests differ; they cannot therefore easily concert or combine their exertions. On the other hand,
the workmen have always some sure resources which enable them to refuse to work when they
cannot get what they conceive to be the fair price of their labor. In the constant struggle for
wages that is going on between these two classes, their strength is divided and success alternates
from one to the other.

It is even probable that in the end the interest of the working class will prevail, for the high wages
which they have already obtained make them every day less dependent on their masters, and as
they grow more independent, they have greater facilities for obtaining a further increase of wages.
I shall take for example that branch of productive industry which is still at the present day the
most generally followed in France and in almost all the countries of the world, the cultivation of
the soil. In France most of those who labor for hire in agriculture are themselves owners of certain
plots of ground, which just enable them to subsist without working for anyone else. When these laborers come to offer their
services to a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses them a certain rate of wages they
retire to their own small property and await another opportunity.

I think that, on the whole, it may be asserted that a slow and gradual rise of wages is one of the
general laws of democratic communities. In proportion as social conditions become more equal,
wages rise; and as wages are higher, social conditions become more equal.

But a great and gloomy exception occurs in our own time. I have shown, in a preceding chapter,
that aristocracy, expelled from political society, has taken refuge in certain departments of
productive industry and has established its sway there under another form; this powerfully affects
the rate of wages.

As a large capital is required to embark in the great manufacturing speculations to which I allude,
the number of persons who enter upon them is exceedingly limited; as their number is small, they
can easily concert together and fix the rate of wages as they please.

Their workmen, on the contrary, are exceedingly numerous, and the number of them is always
increasing; for from time to time an extraordinary run of business takes place during which wages
are inordinately high, and they attract the surrounding population to the factories. But when men
have once embraced that line of life, we have already seen that they cannot quit it again, because
they soon contract habits of body and mind which unfit them for any other sort of toil. These men
have generally but little education and industry, with but few resources; they stand, therefore,
almost at the mercy of the master.

When competition or some other fortuitous circumstance lessens his profits, he can reduce the
wages of his workmen almost at pleasure and make from them what he loses by the chances of
business. Should the workmen strike, the master, who is a rich man, can very well wait, without
being ruined, until necessity brings them back to him; but they must work day by day or they die,
for their only property is in their hands. They have long been impoverished by oppression, and the
poorer they become, the more easily they may be oppressed; they can never escape from this fatal
circle of cause and consequence.

It is not surprising, then, that wages, after having
sometimes suddenly risen, are permanently lowered in this
branch of industry; whereas in other callings the
price of labor, which generally increases but little, is nevertheless constantly augmented.
This state of dependence and wretchedness in which a part of the manufacturing population of our
time live forms an exception to the general rule, contrary to the state of all the rest of the com-
munity; but for this very reason no circumstance is more important or more deserving of the
special consideration of the legislator; for when the whole of society is in motion, it is difficult to
keep any one class stationary, and when the greater number of men are opening new paths to
fortune, it is no less difficult to make the few support in peace their wants and their desires.